skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Seconded. Like most customers, I'd like my book purchase to be a simple one-off transaction. I load it on my kindle and then I read it and then I don't want to be bugged about it. Unless it is a reference book (which to be fair this book might be for some readers) I don't really give a hoot that there's another version.

The most I would be OK with Amazon doing is sticking a "There is an update available" link in my menu while reading. More than that is too intrusive, no matter how much the author thinks he deserves warm fuzzies for performing a good service.
Defense budget..
Swipely Boosts Customer Loyalty, Surpasses $1M in Weekly Transations
hey james, I'm very interested in setting up something like this at my work. Can I get access to the version you're testing?
it is legal ?
Apple made it though, man.
I'm waiting for the sandworms
or, for a shorter read, try http://yehudakatz.com/2011/08/12/understanding-prototypes-in...
Music without the music industry (labels etc) is the internet without aggregators (reddit etc)

What happened on the internet before content aggregators (or before you had access to them)? you'd see a cool website and tell a friend the website address or you'd send a link to a friend and they might pass it on if they cared enough, they might not. That's a few people, unless the website was seriously incredible it would never be seen by maybe a hundred people. Now with sites like reddit a "pretty cool" website can be seen by millions of people.

Music is like that. There are so many artists that produce great music but nobody has ever heard of them because their "network" extends to maybe a couple of friends and friends friends and some of their friends friends friends, unless they get a big break (like shared by an already famous artist) they'll remain pretty small, forever. I bet everyone here knows of an artist they like but who couldn't make a living from their music, whether that's a friend or someone they've seen in an obscure Youtube video.

The music industry (big labels) provide huge value to artists, so many artists would never have the reach they have now if they didn't have labels. Would Justin Bieber be known by hundred of millions if he was still making songs on Youtube?

The idea that sites like kickstarter are the future for creative endeavours is partly true, they can help fund some projects and open up artists to new ways to fund their work, but they can't replace the music industry. Very few people care enough about music to not need to be told who to listen to, or to invest in their favourite artists, they need to be given music to choose from (see: top 40) and decide what they like and buy it.

Things like selling a CD for $10 or a download for $1 are what fund the music industry, if the music industry dies so does the way we consume music. No longer will we be able to just consume, we'll have to find it too. I want the option to seek out new music, I want the option to fund artists I love that want to be independent, I don't want it to be a necessity.

Music is so much more than sounds –
how else do you explain the Gathering of the Juggalos?

marketing
I thought that the patronage model could partly be a bit like a subscription fan club, with various perks and deals on gigs and limited artifacts and streamed studio access and other stuff like that.
How is Rap Genius different from songmeanings.net?
No ads have ever been purchased. All traffic is from word of mouth, believe it or not.
New Gecko image (down)scaling algorithm (Before/After pics)
No marketing.
This is the best answer. Keep all aspects of your appearance and personal life in order, so that when you conducting business, there is nothing else for your employees, investors, and customers to worry about.
I do apologize for the low-content comment, but somehow, all I can think of in reading this is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C89uOeDL9Gw
I'd like to see a fork of Chrome with all the Google stuff taken out and security + privacy tools built in by default, with incognito default
Closure Tools will let you annotate your functions with a return type; their compiler will catch a function so annotated that lacks a return[0].

[0] http://sixlette.rs/snap/Closure_Compiler_Service-20121003-15...
What was changed under the hood to make this possible? Are we simply using a better scaling algorithm?
I think Amazon got to #1 by giving a crap about exactly one thing alone: customer experience. Getting an email about a non-critical update to a random purchase I made 2 months ago? Not a good customer experience.

I feel for you, artymiak, for being treated like a disposable piece of rubbish. Fact is, Amazon has their priorities straight, and helping every snubbed author feel better about their life's work isn't really part of it.
Yea, that was the safety called on the Pats due to the intentional grounding penalty. Was a pretty good outcome for the Giants though!
>If you really believed in 1, 2 & 3 then why start off saying you hate it too? And you think everyone else hates it too?

Saying s/he hates it doesn't make the other points wrong (I actually agree with them). The dislike for pagination might come from waiting for the page to load. It doesn't feel nice to see the whole page flash and wait for it to load again. It's a poor experience. If loading the next page is as quick as it is on Amazon's cloud reader, maybe people wouldn't hate pagination as much.
Thanks, I made the mistake of thinking the 'email' field on my profile was public.
Take at look at the last picture in the post, where the base of the iPhone is cupped in the hand and the thumb is using the keyboard. From that picture it really appears to me that Apple would have been better off making the iPhone wider rather than taller...
I agree with nancyhua. I sort of use "patronage" as short hand, don't let it confuse you. I think to the fan, they must not feel like it's pure patronage... they should get some sort of concrete interaction or recognition back from artist. There should be real value there for fan for this to sustain as a model.
Let's start a class-action lawsuit to challenge it.
That looks so much like mold.
My wife is miffed about the iPhone 5's larger screen, because the 3.5" screen model was at the edge of what was comfortable for her to deal with one-handed.

The "size hasn't been a problem for me!" posts in this thread are hilarious. I'm quite certain the iPhone's target demographic includes a lot more women and girls than are represented on Hacker News.
Except that whole "paying for it thing", there are very very few grants/scholarships for international students and they pay out-of-state fees plus a little more for being foreigners. So yeah ... not as easy as it seems.
I had no idea Rap Genius was a YC company. I listen to _alot_ of rap while working, and often look up the more intricate lyrics/phrases I haven't heard of.

Rap Genius is far and way the best site, the next step down the ladder is things like Yahoo Answers...
Did you read the post? He says it's only "barely acceptable" at 4 inches - hardly glowing praise, and the S3 has a 4.8 inch screen.
Cristiano Ronaldo Goal Ajax vs Real Madrid 0-1
Except that whole "paying for it thing", there are very very few grants/scholarships for international students and they pay out-of-state fees plus a little more for being foreigners. Plus, outside of CPT you're not allowed to work in the US (only 20hrs max, on campus employment is allowed, if you can get it) to make money.

So yeah ... not as easy as it seems.
I agree, I don't do much designing ( especially at the scale where you'd be a likely customer for Layervault ) but I think it looks and feels great and should make the workflow for a lot of designers less frustrating.
He's 19 and been programming for one year.
When I click on "unreasonable searches and seizures," I get this... excellent... explanation:

This part of the Constitution is supposed to guarantee that 5-0 can’t fuck with you (unless they have “probable cause”)

But — the Conservatives found a way around this by allowing a “stop and frisk” aka “Terry stop” if cops have “reasonable suspicion” (this is why they are still allowed to fuck with you) (see Terry v. Ohio)

In an automobile, cops are often held to the “plain view” standard, although the Roberts court has recently increased their ability to fuck with you (see Beacoats v. Georgia)

Nowadays, keeping “your glove compartment locked” is not enough to protect you, as it was in the Jay-Z/Clinton era of liberal jurisprudence in criminal procedure.

While this is a wonderful text and an unimpeachable use of the technology, I can't avoid reflecting that certain initial choices of brand identification may present serious practical concerns in a prospective attempt to pivot and expand.
NASA tries to free creativity with Big Data Challenge
Regarding the title, I assure you that the poor and the tired have a harder time immigrating to the U.S. than any entrepreneur.
I think it's barrier to entry. It must be very frustrating to join Twitter today, see people with thousands of followers and not having any.

Most non-famous people I know who joined Twitter recently follow 50-100 people and have a handful of followers (who know them in real life). They get bored quickly and stop using it.
The, ahem, "genius" of Rap Genius is that the commentary aspect goes a long way towards establishing fair use for the lyrics.
And it is very fortunate that they weren't deported, and that it didn't harm their ability to get visas in the future.

Really. US immigration is more perverse and frustrating than you can imagine. You might be fine, but just because someone said 'I did this and it was OK' doesn't mean it will be. If you aren't sure, take legal advice.

Also, point of information, ESTA isn't a visa. They did it on the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). ESTA is part of the process of entering on the Visa Waiver Program
Ah, single sign-in... also offered by Twitter, Facebook, Google, Firefox, my email address...

I don't disagree that people might pay for it, but why would it by App.net I'd pay? Why would they even pay though? You can trust the App.net developers? No more than those listed, realistically.
Now we know what the business is.
I totally agree - if you want to know if it works, you have to test it all together; however, that's not how I approach unit testing. I don't think mock objects are a good idea during integration testing with perhaps a few exceptions such as an external web service. When you want to ensure that your application works, testing the steps that actual users will go through is the way to know and mocking or stubbing functionality won't help.

Personally, I view unit testing differently. I see it as ensuring that my object gets the right data and sends the right messages. If you start adding tests for things like "did it save to the database" or "did it find 3 results" you're now involving your persistence layer with your testing of business logic. It's a tangential concern.
Nowhere near 1% in my experience. Also, even in research arms, many masters level students are accepted (though it really depends on how low level the research activity is at that particular company, so this is going to vary wildly among different companies)
> End result, the total tax rate in 2050 is about 70%, compared to a tax rate of about 38% in the US now.

The average tax rate, the number that matters, is much lower than 38% now.

The US govt has never collected 22% of GDP in taxes, regardless of rates, and that was for only a couple of years. We have managed to sustain 19-20% for significantly longer.
Understanding Computer Network Basics
Looks unreal - but isn't this similar to http://leapmotion.com or?
The video has no scrubbing controls on it. The project sounds neat but I couldn't fast-forward to the meat of the video so I bailed.
By default in Android, back key pressed when dialogs are showing simply dismiss those dialogs. There are app authors who override back button behavior (wrongly) and break this paradigm. The persistent availability of the back button is great, for the most part, as I know I should be able to get back to where I was in most scenarios.
I wonder if this is part of David Marcus' plan to "radically change" paypal and "earn your trust again"...

http://ndy.gd/JJgB

edit: added trust quote.
The script-markup mixture used by DoubleDollar or Backbone is really just a necessary quirk to achieve templating functionality. I haven't seen it done better honestly.

Try it, you're refusal to "get past the need to mix markup and code" is restricting you from some pretty helpful functionality if you build JS heavy web apps!
Co-Founder of Buffer here. Great discussion, I hope I can clarify on the Buffer part. The key difference to the way Buffer + Kippt are working is that Kippt pulls in these updates before they are posted. So it is essentially an interplay between people adding updates and Kippt pulling these before they even hit Twitter and Facebook. Hope that clarifies.
Related bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=486918

See comment 192 (code is from Chromium).
Doppio: A Java Virtual Machine, Compiler and Disassembler in JavaScript
The user name suggestion's were less than stellar. On the home page it looks like they append a random letter to your name as a suggestion. :\ This problem would be a perfect case for a genetic algorithm where the fitness function is the user. It could present a handful of options, but if you don't want one of them you could select one to be "similar" which would cause it to spawn off new names that you might like.
i think you're getting warm :D
Gervinho Goal Arsenal v Olympiakos 1-0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Dynasty
Aren't Kickstarter & Indie-Go-Go effectively patronage systems?
That's not short hand at all - patrons of the arts, going back to antiquity, generally got a private performance of the work they commissioned in addition to the opportunity to fraternise with the artist. They typically also branded themselves onto the work somehow.

My argument is there aren't enough dollars seeking that experience today as there are consumption dollars (which the industry has gotten used to). In the past, monetising that long tail of demand was prohibitive. Today it is not. As a single example, I would never contribute to support a musician yet my lifetime worth to the music industry is at least tens of thousands of dollars (including concert tickets).

There is enough money in that delta to fund the artists, lobby legislators, and enforce the status quo. That's the problem. If you aren't re-routing that demand you're proposing a nice but idealistic hypothetical.
Best Buy may cut online prices to compete with Amazon
Not intentionally, but I probably should.

I often have the best experiences when I'm forced to talk to someone I don't know, but it's always a bit too awkward for me at first.
How did you get your customers?
I'm from Europe and I don't really getting it.

If you start a class action lawsuit, the best thing PayPal can do is to sue you for contractual non-performance. At least in Europe, even if the contract say that you won't file a lawsuit, the court will throw that part of contract out, usually for constitution terms.

So is this legal in the US? How many of your constitutional rights can you give up in a contract in the US?
The notion that Apple or anybody else can design the perfect sized screen based upon holding the phone in one hand and thumb reach is silly, because in this scenario many apps are rendered useless without multi-touch!

It's obvious that people hold phones differently, use phones differently, and have different sized hands. It's also obvious that some people like buying phones with bigger screens. Why does everything Apple do have to be justified or rationalized as some kind of great and insightful design choice?
“was applying his experience to question the law, not using his experience to determine the facts”

If successful, this line of reasoning will have consequences for the doctrine of jury nullification.
The back button is ubiquitous for each phone. Yes, it differs between manufacturers but most people only have one phone.

Irrespective of where on the bottom row it is, it's still more useful than the top left of the iPhone 5.
If we ever confirm life on Mars (or anywhere else for that matter), I really hope we don't find that it shares a common ancestor with life on Earth. Panspermia is cool, but two instances of abiogenesis in a single solar system? That is huge.

Here's to hoping it's life, but not as we know it.
Ask HN: How do you split app revenues?
When developing an app with friends/partenrs, how do you handle splitting revenue and expenses? Do you use an Excel spreadsheet, pay a 3rd party, or use an online tool? I would love to know what the market is doing.

We have built a pretty robust site for ourselves and I think it may be generally useful to all small dev shops to track expenses, payments and revenue.

Thanks for any and all input!
Chemical Bond Shields Extreme Microbes From Poison
Probably, see: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2011...
Sounds like an opportunity to charge people to set up their OpenID and use your revenue to get more companies to implement it.

Disclaimer: I don't know much about building websites and I don't understand why OpenID hasn't got more traction.
But those people still have an account...the article is about people who haven't even tried Twitter.
Clearly the Apple koolaid causes your hands to shrink. That is the only conclusion I can make from this blog post.
Probably everybody reading Steve's post had a "eureka" moment on different sections. For me, it was the dual-duty caps lock key idea. I've always used "ii" remapped to ESC in vim insert mode--that changes today.
The answer is (probably) in the metrics:
-Check the LTV for members, is it going up or down?
-What is the number of rebuys a typical customer usually makes?
-What is the usual cost to acquire a new customer, can that be improved upon?

More ephemeral:
- Identify if the business has "wide moats" [1]
- Can a google algorithm update wipeout your traffic? Is organic google traffic even your biggest traffic source (OP, said "word of mouth" not sure if he meant literally or organic SE traffic)
- Are there any competitors?
- OP said the site depends on some scraping, any worry that the scrapee may cut off your access?

etc, etc, etc

Lots of stuff springs to mind without knowing the actual site being sold.

[1] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/wide-economic-moat.asp#a...
One way to think about it is by asking yourself, "If I were just entering this situation today, would I take the job/join the project? Or would I see it as a fruitless endeavor?" That can help get your mind out of thinking about what you've already sunk into the job.
I find a couple of the conclusions of this article very misleading. A couple of the lesson are great, but I feel the need to point out a few conclusions that are not quite spot-on:

1. Random photos are better than screenshots

Everything is better than straight screenshots. You didn't show what you were using before, but at a dismal 5% conversion I am guessing it was straight screenshots that weren't "posed" on a device or anything? Photos that have relevant content and even a minor emotional effect will say more than your screenshots ever will. I don't think I would call a football and baseball image "random" on a sports site, though. They are more relevant to a sports fan than a screenshot.

2. Large Background Photos Convert Really Well

That is not universally true. The two screenshots you have provided demonstrate the effect of focus in a design, not the effect of background images. You have used a background that is not only relevant, but is high-contrast colors and blurred, which creates a "foreground" out of your form. That will make the user's eyes go directly to the form rather than getting lost in your boring headlines, etc.

3. Inciting curiosity works better than clarity

It's interesting that you interpreted this as "curiosity" rather than benefits vs. features. Your original headline was a classic mistake. "A social network for sports fans" is a useless statement. No benefit, no motivation, no reason to click. "Follow sports together" is inherently more appealing because it describes the benefit of the service and has a social motivation built in. THAT is what you have done. Curiosity is not relevant.

4. Focus on the value proposition for brand new users, not advanced users

Duh. I don't want to be disrespectful, but this is a pure numbers rationale. In any market there will always be a small minority of advanced users compared to the vast majority of basic users. This will be true for every service, ever, unless the only people that could possibly understand the offer are advanced users.

5. Allowing users to sign up with their email increases FB/Twitter sign-ups

This was a good one. It is usually less effective to give people an ultimatum (register or leave) than to give them options to compare (would you rather register with FB or email?). Users will focus on the choice rather than the "yes or no" if you give them useful options to choose from. I once read an example test where more people were willing to pay for an a set of partially broken dishes if they were compared to an incomplete set than if they were sold alone. Same principle.

6. Figure out and optimize for the target demographics that convert the best

In the age of analytics, it is futile to define target audiences before statistics are available. It is much better to do as you have done: launch it and let your target audience identify itself. Good lesson.
Ask HN: Why is it easier to make money by being evil?
So, why is it easier for a company to be evil?

Example 1: Why is it easier for a company to make money by tracking their customers and selling their data to the highest bidder then it is to make money ANY other way?

Example 2: Why is it easier to sell software which tracks employees in a Orwellian style central management control system then it is to sell software which empowers employees to do what they think is best?

It seems like it is much easier to make money by doing evil things then it is by doing good. Why is this?
Text is Forever - A multi-platform approach to living a life in plain text
"reddit for music" sounds so much better than the current model, "play the same thing on loop 10 times an hour".
From a UI perspective, Rap Genius explains lyrics line-by-line whereas SongMeanings is more of a discussion of the whole song, and Rap Genius tends to canonicalize explanations whereas SongMeanings is more of a free-for-all discussion. The line-by-line system is much better for rap music.